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Sunday, May 25, 2014

Following in the footsteps of BMA’s 2013 annual global conference, BLAZE, which trended in Chicago for its duration, BMA has high hopes that its expanded social-media team will help generate even more attention worldwide this year.

Led by Marissa Pick, a former BtoB magazine marketer and now Director Social Media for Euromoney Institutional Investor, the team will be working hard at BMA14 to promote widespread social coverage of the conference and engage attendees on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, among others.

“The BMA14 presence on these platforms is already quite active,” Pick said, noting that the conference hashtag—for use across all social-media platforms—is #BMA14. “Please use this hashtag whenever talking about BMA14 in social-media communities.”

To access—and contribute to—the BMA14 presence on any of these social platforms, please go to the links below.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

While not all BMA14 presenters will have time for audience questions, those that do have time at the end of their sessions to do so will rely on BMA14 event app Livecube and a curation team to feed questions to the wide screen behind the stage.

BMA14 event advisor Barry Seidenstat has prepared a short video below that explains how to use Livecube to ask questions from the audience from smartphones, tablets and laptops.

All questions, even those for which there is no stage time to permit answers, will be collected and shared with all conference presenters, who will be asked by BMA to respond post BMA14. Their responses will be aggregated and shared back with all BMA14 attendees via the ISEBOX content repository tool.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Want to get the skinny from deeply experienced marketer-buyers and users of marketing automation systems?

That’s the idea behind this late Thursday afternoon, May 29, BMA14 panel, titled “Inside Scoop: What Marketing Automation Users Wish They’d Known Before Buying Their System.”

To be moderated by David Raab, president of Raab Associates and a noted marketing technology consultant and impartial advisor (but NOT a licensed reseller) on marketing automation systems, the panel will examine the pitfalls to be aware of in evaluating, buying and using marketing automation systems.

Setting a very high standard, David set about to recruit three panelists who had to have bought and used at least two of the leading marketing automation systems out there today. They hail from Lenovo, Solar Winds and Molex Incorporated.

“This is a subject I have always wanted to see discussed in this way at a global BMA conference,” said Gary Slack, BMA14 chief organizer and BMA Vice President of Professional Development.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Presented annually, the Crain award honors a notable business marketing professional who has made a substantial mark in the world of business marketing and who distinguished himself or herself for their contributions to the profession via BMA service.

Rance Crain is the son of G.D. Crain, Jr., who helped found BMA more than 80 years ago and who launched around the same time the predecessor publication to BtoB magazine, which was integrated into Advertising Age earlier this year.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer of Corporate Visions and perennial BMA favorite and three-time global conference speaker, has retitled his BMA14 talk to “Pairing the Right Stories With the Right Skills: How Marketers Can Assist Sales in Communicating Value.”

Based on brand new research, he will discuss how b2b marketers can better equip salespeople in two ways to have more successful customer conversations.

One, by using the right stories to identify “unconsidered needs” that create urgency to change and choose you. And, two, possessing the right skills to use whiteboard-style visuals (versus PowerPoint) to make their delivery as different as their story.